Devastating Texas Wildfires Still Raging: 1,000 Homes Destroyed, Horses & Livestock Evacuated, More Deaths Reported, More Than 100,000 Acres Burned (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on September 7, 2011
The number of homes destroyed by wildfires in Texas has now risen from 300 over the Labor Day weekend to at least 1,000 homes destroyed as of Tuesday, and at least 100,000 acres have been scorched across the state. Two more people since the weekend have been reported dead, their identities not yet revealed to the press, and officials say they fear that the death toll will rise further as more burned-out homes are searched.
With high winds and low humidity, there’s no end in sight at this point for Texas and these deadly wildfires — you’re all in our prayers.
WMAR ABC News, Wildfires in Texas
From Yahoo! News, Officials: 1,000 Texas homes burned in past week:
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — More than 1,000 homes have been destroyed in at least 57 wildfires across rain-starved Texas, most of them in one devastating blaze near Austin that is still raging out of control, officials said Tuesday.
Gov. Rick Perry, who cut short a presidential campaign trip to South Carolina on Monday to return to help oversee firefighting efforts in Texas, toured a blackened area near Bastrop, about 25 miles from Austin, where a fast-moving blaze destroyed nearly 600 homes on Monday.
At a news conference afterward, he marveled at the destruction and pointing out that more than 100,000 acres in the drought-stricken state had burned over the past week, and that more than 3.5 million acres — an area roughly the size of Connecticut — had burned since December.
“Pretty powerful visuals of individuals who lost everything,” Perry said. “The magnitude of these losses are pretty stunning.”
KXAN News, Firefighters talk about fire fight
From The Horse.com, Texas Wildfires: Too Soon to Know How Many Horses Evacuated:
Members of Texas’ equine community are working together to help horses threatened by wildfires raging in that state.
Due to record summer temperatures and persistent drought, several wildfires have flared in Texas this year, according to the Texas Forest Service website. Since Sept. 1 Texas Forest Service has responded to 181 fires covering a total of 118,413 acres. On Sept. 5 the agency responded to 22 new fires affecting 7,544 acres, including 10 new large fires, according to the website.
While fire crews work to contain the blazes, horse owners are getting together to offer safe haven for animals residing in the fire’s path.
Texas horse owner Beth Rand spent this past weekend coordinating the evacuation of more than 80 horses from Bastrop County, near Austin, where flames are threatening homes and ranches. She said an email she sent to contacts outside the fire zone seeking help to transport those animals to safer locations drew an unexpected number of responses.
“It just went viral,” said Rand. “We were able to place the horses with people we know and who we trust.”
Texas wild fire destroys Bastrop State Park
From Catholic Online, Deadly fires still out of control in Texas:
AUSTIN, TX (Catholic Online) – Extremely dry conditions and the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee are feeding multiple fires throughout the state. Near Austin, the state capitol,almost 600 homes have been destroyed.
While the storm is fanning the blaze with high winds from afar, it is too distant to drop rain and suppress the fire by dampening the dry brush it’s consuming. Fortunately, as the storm moves slowly away, the winds are starting to diminish, which is encouraging the firefighters.
Four lives have apparently been lost to the fires, sources reporting two pairs of victims. The first pair have been described as a mother and child, and others sources are only stating that an additional two victims have been recovered.
Officials have not released any specifics on the second pair. They also fear the death toll could rise further as more burned out homes are searched.
Meanwhile, thousands of people have been evacuated across the state and schools near the fire-stricken areas remained closed.
AlJazeera News: Texas wildfire destroys hundreds of homes
From The Guardian, Texas fires destroy more than 1000 homes:
One of the most devastating wildfire outbreaks in Texas history has left more than 1,000 homes in ruins and stretched the state’s firefighters to the limit, confronting Govenor Rick Perry with a disaster at home just as the Republican presidential contest begins in earnest.More than 180 fires have erupted in the past week across the lone star state, with nearly 600 homes destroyed in one catastrophic blaze in and around Bastrop, near Austin, that raged out of control on Tuesday for a third day.
Whipped into an inferno by Tropical Storm Lee’s winds over the weekend, the fire burned more than 45 square miles, forced the evacuation of thousands of people and killed at least two, bringing the overall death toll to at least four.
Perry cut short a presidential campaign trip to South Carolina to deal with the crisis. On Tuesday, he toured a blackened area near Bastrop, and later deployed the state’s elite search team to the area to look for more possible victims. Texas Task Force 1 is the same outfit sent to New York after the September 11 terrorist attacks and to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“[There are] pretty powerful visuals of individuals who lost everything,” he said after the tour. “The magnitude of these losses are pretty stunning.”
The governor would not say whether he would take part in Wednesday evening’s Republican presidential debate in California, explaining that he was “substantially more concerned about making sure Texans are being taken care of”. But his campaign spokesman, Mark Miner, said in an email later in the day that Perry planned to be there.
[...]
The fire in Bastrop county is easily the single most devastating wildfire in Texas in over a decade, eclipsing a blaze that destroyed 168 homes in the north of the state in April. A Texas Forest Service spokeswoman, April Saginor, said state wildfire records went back only to the late 1990s.
From The Daily Beast, Texas Wildfires Claim 2 More Lives:
The wildfire currently raging in Texas’s Bastrop County near Austin has taken two more lives, officials said Tuesday. The bodies were found in an area that had been asked to evacuate. On Sunday, the fires had killed an 18-month-old girl and her mother. The fire is the worst single blaze in the state’s history: it has burned 1,000 homes so far, more than any fire previously in the state. The fire—one of 63 currently burning in Texas—has scorched 100,000 acres so far, fueled in part by strong winds from Tropical Storm Lee.
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